Living with my fiancé would be wonderful. We would enjoy sipping tea as we sat on the porch and talked about things we’d heard in the news that day. We would awake in the morning with a smile and an affection embrace, following a night of comfortable spooning. I would lean over and kiss him while I cooked dinner and he cleaned up the leftover beer cans, without my asking.
As quaint and romantic as the idea of moving in with the love of my life seemed to be, the bags under my eyes say otherwise, and our irritated, shot nerves say otherwise. Sleep has been the number one most contentious issue in the first week of Operation: Domesticity. I have been waking up at quarter after seven to eat, dress, makeup my face and head out the door to catch the bus to work. He works overnights on weekends, and so he stays up late, allowing his body to adjust to the timings of shift work. Heading to bed close to midnight has been something of a compromise, where he might stay up later on his own, and I try and tiptoe around our bedroom in the morning while I ready myself. This twentysomething needs her beauty sleep in quality amounts, so I have come to dread my radio alarm clock with a fury it hath never before known. It’s a good thing it’s across the room, or surely I would have rolled over, shotputted it into the wall, and continued sleeping. I pine for the weekend morning I can sleep endlessly. Until then, I cake on the yellow-based undereye concealer, load myself full of caffeine and tell my man I love him as I stumble out the door in a half-awake stupour.
Later that morning at work, I get a call from him telling me his plans to sleep in late (but also to get the requisite amount of sleep before his weekend overnights) was thwarted by the 8:30 am bass pounding of the music in the apartment above ours.
We are both tired, and on the verge of exploding sickness sure to incapacitate us and drive our shared misery to new depths. IKEA furniture still left to assemble, a few boxes to unpack, constant cleaning up after ourselves (with a few “helpful” reminders from me to him on that subject) and irritated snipes directed at each other; thus is the evidence of our shaky beginning to our Operation.
I don’t doubt it will get easier as we adjust to each other’s habits and ways, and as we both resolve to get good sleep, even if it means not “spending time” together before sleep every night. Maybe one day we’ll even chuckle at our shaky first week. But for now, all my over-tired mind can process is how much I want sleep, not disturbed by bass music, an alarm clock, or the blanket being stolen as he rolls over.